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07/03/2013

What to Do About Immigration, Legal and Illegal? Posner

Becker rightly divides the immigration issue into two parts. One is the criteria for lawful immigration,and specifically whether a potential immigrant’s contribution to the U.S. economy should be eighted heavily. The other is what to do about illegal immigration.

I agree that a foreigner’s potential contribution to the U.S. economy should be weighted heavily in favor of allowing the foreigner to be admitted to the United States as a permanent resident eligible for citizenship after a few years. I wouldn’t limit eligibility for favored treatment to specified skills, however, because it’s difficult to know which skills will be valuable in the years to come. I would llow any foreigner (provided of course that he or she was not a criminal or otherwise undesirable) to purchase permanent residency for a stiff fee, without regard to the foreigner’s skills or education. The stiff fee is a contribution to American wealth, and in addition wealthy people tend to be productive and to have a high IQ, though of course there are exceptions. I am aware of the body of thought, associated with ethicists such as Harvard’s Michael Sandel that not all commodities should be salable—some people want to exclude organs for transplant, others medical care or admission to elite schools—but I can’t think of a practical objection to selling citizenship to foreigners at a stiff price, though I am sure many Americans would think it a repulsive transaction, whereas giving preference to persons with needed skills does not trigger negative emotions—except among Americans who, having similar skills, fear competition from immigrants. Many countries, however, such as Switzerland and Canada, do give preference to would-be immigrants who will bring substantial money into the country.

The question what to do about illegal immigration is analytically more difficult, and certainly politically more difficult, than the issue of preferential treatment of foreigners with special skills. As I wrote in my immigration post of November 14 of last year, “The standard answer [to the problem of illegal immigrants who are already here] is to provide a ‘path to citizenship.’ The difficulty is in doing this without reverting to the policy of unrestricted immigration that prevailed in the United States until the 1920s, a policy that would not be feasible now, given the density of the U.S. population today and the enormous size of the world population (7 billion). If government makes it easy for an illegal immigrant to become a legal immigrant and thus a citizen, this amounts to a policy of de facto unrestricted immigration. To amnesty the entire existing illegal immigrant population (excepting criminals) would encourage further illegal immigration by creating an expectation of future amnesties. Coupling an amnesty with an effective policy of preventing future illegal immigration would be optimal if that prevention were feasible, but apparently it isn’t…One answer may be to allow [the present illegal immigrants] to become citizens, but to impose a penalty sufficient to reduce the flow of future illegal immigrants. Another may be to assist Mexico to raise the Mexican standard of living, since the rule of thumb is that when a nation’s per capita income reaches 40 percent of the American per capita income immigration to the United States from that nation will fall to a low level.”

Becker is optimistic that the rising standard of living in Mexico, coupled with the decline in the birth rate, will do much to solve the problem of future illegal immigration without need for other measures. I agree, and it is a very important point, because it is so much less expensive (in fact free) than the proposal in the Senate bill to spend tens of billions of dollars on enhanced border security, which will probably have little effect because the illegal immigrants and their aiders and abettors will take countermeasures.

But if neither changes in Mexico nor enhanced border security turn out to be effective in stemming illegal immigration, this will cast a shadow on providing a quick path to citizenship, let alone outright amnesty, because either measure reduces the cost of illegal immigration and therefore should stimulate it. I don’t have a solution to this problem.

Comments

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My positions are already of record, so I will try not to belabor.

It is Sovereignty 101 for a government to exercise dominion over its land by deciding who can be on it and who cannot, and regardless of any practicality on the ground, I reject the status quo wherein someone other than the government makes that decision. Eleven million? One is too many, because it means my government has abdicated.

The idea of selling the right to be here with the bare minimum of vetting is problematic because many immigrants don't have a clue what life is like here. Several years back the INS caught a few hundred Chinese coming into Manhattan in the cargo hold of a freighter. These people had scraped together as much as $30,000 each for that trip, funded in most cases by their whole family's wealth, and while they were in truth destined to work in slave conditions in Chinese restaurants with negligible reward for decades, post-capture interviews revealed that they were expecting to become so extraordinarily rich that streets in China would be named after them upon their return.

An educated applicant is far more likely to have a more realistic grasp of his true prospects here, saving us the expense of the experiment.

Maybe we should also require each entrant to post sufficient escrow for a ticket home, an option to be exercised at our discretion upon those who misbehave or cease to be self-supporting. If a stranger knocks on my door and asks to enter my home, I first of all feel absolutely zero obligation to agree to this request. If I decide to let him in, I (1) reserve the right to order him to leave, and (2) do not create any obligation to feed him, beyond perhaps immediate sustenance if he is literally starving or dehydrated.

Tradition is just another way of saying we're too lazy and/or too stupid and/or too scared to do our own thinking in the present, and so we shirk our responsibility for ourselves and rely on what somebody else decided to do in the past under a set of conditions that may or may not be sufficiently similar to ours to produce a similar outcome. Ideas aside, this country's blind loyalty to tradition, accurate or not, will hold sway. We'll get what we deserve for that cowardice.

We cannot conclude that it is difficult to prevent illegal immigration, because it hasn't been tried. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have simply decided to laxly enforce the law, and to take drastic actions to prevent state governments from enforcing it. Budgeting more money will not, of course, help with that problem. Enforcement plus penalties, e.g. 2 years forced labor for any illegal immigrant caught, could easily do so. Or, very cheaply, we could apply Becker (1968) and impose a term of life in prison on any illegal aliens caught, while spending less than we do now on enforcement.